How many posts have I written about Prison Architect alphas since joining RPS last October? Checking the tag page for the game suggests seven thousand. It’s not my fault, it’s just that each one adds a feature or set of features I find irresistible. The latest, alpha 20, introduces a set of failure states to the game, including the ability to be convicted of criminal negligence. You will then “spend time within your own jail as a prisoner.”

The regular developer video showing the new features is below.

As well as judging your own performance, the game does more to judge the progress of your prisoners as their way through your penal (snigger) system.

– PUNISHMENT To what extent has this prisoner been punished? Long jail terms and solitary increase this.
– REFORM How successful have your reform attempts been? Passing reform programs and working increases this
– SECURITY Was the prisoner kept safely locked away? Fights and escapes detract from this, armed lockdown counts towards it
– HEALTH A measure of the welfare of your prisoner. Keeping them well fed and exercised will increase this.

These factors are combined, together with their age, number of prior convictions etc, to produce an estimate of their re-offending chance.

This is all part of expanding – or even adding – the idea of an endgame to Prison Architect, rather than leaving the game to become shapeless once your construction has hit its maximum size or has become self-sustaining. Find the full set of patch notes through on the Prison Architect forum.

Normally, the proper (yet still quite tired & tiring) response to a post like this is the stock “it’s an alpha”.

In this case though, it’s pretty apparent anaemic has no idea what they’re talking about, because the fact it’s in alpha means that up until this very release there were no fail states at all, you’ve been able to build whatever you like with complete impunity. Unless anaemic’s somehow managed to play this update substantially since release they’re just pointlessly trolling.

That doesn’t stop people deciding their own fail states, as I have, when my prison gets ridiculously out of control and everyone starts dying I don’t really want to continue it.

But I agree it sounds a bit wrong, what he says here. Maybe he means it in the same sense as I do, that you only really have the option of having a perfectly balanced prison if you want it to function at all properly – otherwise you get chaos.

Maybe your goal is to make a huge riot, but that’s not how most people will want to play the game, and they’ll very soon discover that there isn’t much freedom to do things their way, because it won’t lead to satisfying results. Even learning from your mistakes is difficult because there are so many variables involved its hard to realize where your mistakes actually were.

In its current state I just find this game gets too hard too soon. I build up what should be a reasonable little prison, with everything I’m told it needs, then the first load of prisoners arrive and immediately start killing each other. It seems as though you either have everything perfectly optimized or you fail, which means you have to know all the systems and understand how they interact. Hopefully they will add a mission based mode that introduces the systems one by one, so that people can play through that at their own pace before diving into the full sandbox experience.

Here is how it works it doesn’t have to be perfect, and you can take in low risk instead of medium risk. I only have done 4 starts now and am I novice at best, I know the basics, and I had fights right off the bat in only one start because things weren’t up and running fast enough. Although I watched a tutorial video my first run, and pause like crazy every time I build a new prision as I play triage on what gets built first.

For me its always a toss up, I want the cells in first, but right at the start, the prisoners need chow, and a shower doesn’t hurt only thing the cells provide is something other then a holding cell for them to actually get dragged inside, and toilets; I never checked but after a long ride I like to use the toilet.. You got to remember its like the sims, they have needs, and if you got the basics, some times they are just violent, or don’t feel there is enough security pressence.

First thing I do every time is administration building, then power and water is put in que, I do little layout plans for the rest while they work on that. Key thing is you need to have the cooks after midnight to avoid the daily salary, but still early enough there is food waiting the second meal time strikes. Number one thing that drives cons and even armies crazy is not eating. I never did prison but in bootcamp we got lost on a march and didn’t eat breakfast till about 10 am, we normally eat before the sun is even up, people including me were on the verge of fist fights while setting up tents from the hunger. Cons have an active schedule not much to do but be paraded around, and workout so they need their food, or bad things will happen.

Wait what? What did you play the very first alpha I got this after the sale and this update. It has as much if not more then theme hospital. I think your confusing the dull as hell scenarios it had for the tycoon part. The tycoon part was pretty simple they check in, get examined get treated get billed… In this you got to worry about needs, contraband, tunnelers, riots, fights and ways to turn a profit while managing all of that. Most in depth you got to worry about in them hospital is whether or not the staff likes each other, and it never resulted in murder, fires or dogs being sicked on people…

I did some digging for studies, and there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that longer prison terms can reliably and consistently reduce recidivism: link to wsipp.wa.govlink to pewstates.org This might sound like a small thing to complain about, but I’ve seen a lot of complaints that the mechanics in place overvalue more punitive approaches to prison-making.

I think they “know” that, but for game-play it makes sense… because only having the “reform” rating would be kinda “boring”. It serves more like an “evil karma” system.

In a book on penal law (Austria) it was written almost in verbatim that punishment does basically nothing at all. Now, I had classes with the author/professor, he wasn’t what people would call a liberal/wuss/leftie etc. Furthermore, he was one of the few who talked a lot about court and other practical stuff during classes.

I honestly don’t know what I think about their staunch decision not to try and make a message, there’s a lot of good you could do with a prison sim but at the same time… would trying to guide the player’s hands take it away from a “sim” game? Surely they could do both? Maybe?
I don’t really know what the answer is here.

I feel like they are trying really hard not to offend anyone and gave both schools of thought tools to make their perfect prison. You also don’t want to punish people for making a really depressing prison because it is fun to play around with.

That’s because prisoners get playstations and fucking pocket money while they are in there. The ideal solution would be to make it so hideous that re-offending and ending up back in the chokey would be last on your mind.

The problem with that logic is that it makes criminals worse because often the reasons for committing crimes have more to do with up bringing and mental health problems. Making the punishment worse just means they will go to further extremes to stay out of jail for example any state that has a three strikes law.

Suppose you go an awful jail, where you get raped daily, cannot see your family, eat hideous stuff and have no leisure time, no job, nothing.
Imagine this for some years, every day.
Now, would you come out of that as a newly functional member of society, ready to get a job (how? You’re from JAIL!) and rebuild your life (it goes on in your absence), or would you be quite destroyed indeed, and either become a husk or get back into crime?

hint: you’d prolly be quite fucked.

Depends on the type of offender ofc, a professional hitman/punisher/gangsta/mafioso/whatever would surely go right back to his “job” with a (renewed?) hatred for those who oppose him!

It’s a convenient concept, though. Much easier to develop the ‘prison is a hotel’ stereotype/myth than it is to actually consider how societies can prevent crime and rehabilitate criminals; means you can arbitrate any responsibility for thinking about it.

Exactly, even past that point, some people can’t be rehabilitated and need to be removed society but we don’t need to act like a sociopathic society by resorting to the tactics of these people we say are too dangerous to live among us. I think that makes society a lie.

Yes, politics seems to be largely rhetoric and tribalism rather than a will as a society to understand how the world works to better our lot. Granted, certain issues that would benefit society as a whole would disadvantage certain groups, but in general public discourse is pretty terrible. It’s telling that at a (British) cabinet level there’s no support for leaving the EU because, surprise, it’s beneficial for Britain to remain involved in the continent, and the most dangerous thing strategically for Britain is when Europe is unified against it (as with Napoleon and Hitler). But emotionally, the idea of being (standoffishly) involved in Europe is inimical to nationalists, even if in fact it hurts Britain to demand a full withdrawal from the EU. (And this is even just reasoning on a tribal level; as a species global peace and unity sounds like a pretty neat thing).

1. That’s not how deterence works. The chance of being caught is a far bigger factor than the fear of punishment if you are caught.

2. If you want to lower the rate of re-offending give people the chance to be something other than a criminal. If you leave people with no way to pick up their life afterwards then you leave them no choice but to re-offend.

Mechanics in place, maybe. The devs have stated frequently they’re trying to make it so both authoritarian and liberal prisons can work as well as each other. To me it sounds like a rather tall order, but we’ll see – once again, it’s an alpha.

Attempting to balance one viewpoint with another can be problematic. Like the radio show that ‘balances’ a scientist’s comments on climate change with the views of some nutcase they found.

Basically, balancing a misrepresentation, even with something more truthful, still leaves half your game/airtime devoted to a misrepresentation. And the two views may come across as equally credible, even if one is based on facts and the other isn’t.

Prison Architect seems like it isn’t taking this stuff particularly seriously, it’s all cartoony, so it’s playing with pop culture ideas rather than realities, which is fine. But I would be more interested if it was based on facts, since criminal justice is an interesting, important, misunderstood subject.

Ugh, and the next thing I knew it was 1am and my bladder was bursting.
Definitely ‘moreish’ gaming, although I can’t see it being as much of a long term fad for me as FTL. I suspect I’ll play it for a bit, and then put it down for a couple of releases until they add a new feature or ten, and then another late night binge.
I am sat here this morning still thinking about planning a better prison, which is a good sign (for the game) I think.

You didn’t mention that part that if there is an out-of-control riot, the national guard comes in and literally machineguns their way through the entire prison, killing all your prisoners. (also a failure state). It gets a bit messy. I’m tempted to make a riot myself just for that to happen.

He mentions in the video that he plans on adding prisoner surrender during riots when riot guards or the national guard shows up. So they aren’t going for a lol underclasses wackiness, they just haven’t implemented everything yet.

I always found the “bleeding heart” epithet to be more appropriate for delicate flowers who get the vapours around anyone expressing critical opinions of anything. Toughen up a little, eh? But excellent use of concrete imagery, B+.

I bought it a couple months ago. There was a short tutorial at the time, which actually has a compelling storyline that highlights the so-far untapped potential the game has for exploring the moral ambiguity surrounding the game’s subject matter. Hopefully there’s more content like that eventually. I haven’t played since; waiting for final release, but I’m happy to have it on my backlist.

I’ve played it for several hours having grat fun but I would say no, don’t buy it yet. The experience isn’t finished in the slightest and it is obvious this is going to be a great game. I think you waste some of your fun (as I have) by playing it early. I suspect you’ll enjoy it much more by waiting until it is finished and polished.
I’ve taken this as a lesson personally and have stopped myself several times of buying into ‘early access’ no matter how much fun something looks in a lets play.

If you pay them $50 for the game then your name and biography is put into the game (which is why some of them are quite badly spelled I suspect).
Pay $250 and you get your face in the game too.
I suppose rather than your name you could use someone else’s who you don’t like very much.

I really, really hope they add a Dwarf Fortress-esque adventure mode selectable from the start. Being able to escape from pre-made prisons or your own would be a TON of tun. I think I need to play Chronicles of Riddick again.

I love the game.. and this update sounds cool. Sadly, I haven’t played it in a while. I’ve been real busy lately.. and when I play.. I tell myself “I’ll just play for an hour” … then my back starts to hurt and I realize I’ve been playing for 3 hrs.

I was just wondering… is there still a way to name an inmate? I remember that you could when I first bought the game… but I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like it.. so I didn’t pay the extra money. Is it still an option? Even thou I already own it?